COLOUR SPECTRUM IN THE ENGLISH WORLDVIEW AND THE AUTHOR’S DISCOURSE

Abstract

Colour semantics has been in focus of mankind since the time immemorial. People name and classify colours in various ways. Colour terms have generated a lot of contradictory opinions because of the fact that colour quality is not always manifested in exactly the same way [see: 1; 11]. The present paper is a study of semantic functions of colour adjectives in the English-Language worldview and the author’s discourse. The colour value represented by adjective meets the standard in the conceptual system of the English worldview but in discourse the value changes due to the impact of the author’s intention, adjective combinability in the sentence pattern and the discourse register (professional vs. non-professional). The meaning of colour adjectives is context-dependent – their gradability does not coincide with that one of other semantic groups of adjectives. Obviously, the interpretation of colour terms includes a context-dependent component in discourse. Gradability of colour terms is a semantic property intensifying levels or degrees of the quality. Unfortunately they have received relatively little attention in cognitive semantics and their standard value is taken for granted. Additionally, they are referred to gradable and non-gradable classes of adjectives. But in the process of their semantic analysis we cannot support that point of view.